Playing Mind Games: “Neuro” Explores the Power of the Brain

by Louis Bedigian

“The time comes when he understands that in a world where everything is bought and sold, where people are killed for monetary profit, police and courts are bribed easily, he has to fight for justice.”  

Coming from developer Revolt Games (http://revoltgames.com/) and publisher GFI (http://gfi.su), Neuro takes pieces of Psi-Ops and other memorable mind-manipulators and turns up the madness (or is it mind-ness?) 110%.  Extrasensory enemy detection, mental influence, guided telekinesis – those are just a few of the brain’s secrets that this game messes with.

“Telekinesis is really strong ability, and only few of psionics have it,” said Neuro Game Designer Nikita Kareev. “Most of them can perfectly use extrasensoric vision (an ability to see organic objects through the artificial obstacles,) and meditative self-recovery.”

Intriguing, but what else can we do?

Nikita continues: “The gifted psionics can do some other fun things. For example, one can influence humans mentally to provoke uncontrolled anger. Or, literally, incinerate the victim by the eyes. All of these and other abilities you can not only see in action but also use them by yourself.”

With our minds focused on the game, we tapped into the mind of Nikita Kareev to unearth the Neuro’s thoughtful secrets.

Neuro is set many years into the future, beginning during the fourth century of the Space Era.  Physically and visually, what does this mean? Are the locations entirely fictitious?

Nikita Kareev: Neuro is set many years into the future – that is right. Also, Neuro’s atmosphere is close to traditional cyberpunk, even more materially-minded, than in most titles of this genre. There are no intelligent robots, plasma blasters and various inhabitants of the distant planets. Neuro universe – is not a romantic future. I guess, it’s better to hope that we will never have such future. This world’s development is changed from intensive to extensive – depression is reigning on the Earth Confederation’s planets. The scene of game’s action is on fictitious planets of the Archer.

One of them is Sorgo, a part of the Earth Confederation. It is densely populated planet - there are a lot of huge corporations and political organizations. It is also one of the most criminal planets, corruption, financial intrigues and gangsters rule there. Another planet, Cloto, divorced from Confederation and obtained a success and independence. The Clans rule the roost there with their General Council.  “Clans” and “confederations” – are the main forces in the game.

Despite that both of them are human, and even lived together for a long time, for us they are different races. Clans are a technically developed community, close in discovering artificial intellect. The basic achievement of the clans are the brain implants, they are prohibited in the Confederation area. That means that no one of the Clan’s inhabitants can cross the frontier legally, because each of them was implanted in childhood.

Confederation is a more traditional society that studies human mental abilities (also called parapsychology) and continually wide steady extending their territory. The plot of the game weaves around the intrigues between the relations of two forces.

What is so special about the psi-fighters?  Why are they commissioned to take on situations that normal humans can't handle?

NK: All psionics are under control of Strategical Research Department – it is the central law-enforcement body of Confederation. They study long-time trainings there. The aim of this training is to control their superhuman abilities.

No wonder that the Department wants to use such people in special operations. That’s why they study them – extrasensory enemy detection, mental influence, guided telekinesis, suggestia and the others. 

However, not every human can shoot flames from the eyes. Humanity is not so evolved yet and really gifted fighters are isolated scarce. Such fighters are training for The Most Special Missions. It happens until scientists of the Department will not find the way how to increase the number of psionics. But to do that, they have to cooperate with Cloto’s inhabitants that have totally different purposes. 

Do players control one of the psi-fighters?  Do we end up fighting with or against them?

NK: The Player controls young and gifted psionic fighter – James Gravesen. James is a maximalist as most young people are. He believes in triumph of justice and strictly follows the SSD’s instructions. But the time comes when he understands that in a world where everything is bought and sold, where people are killed for monetary profit, police and courts are bribed easily, he has to fight for justice. 

Are your powers limited in any way, or can you perform the abilities whenever you want?

NK: Ability to use psi-abilities is limited only by mental power of the human organism. Usage of any psi-ability requires an immense concentration and a lot of hidden mental reserves. This process fags out! After each séance of “practical parapsyhology” it takes a lot of time to recover, restore brain activity. After taking some rest, the player is able to fight again using these abilities. Main thing is to have those seconds to rest. 

Is there a story behind all this – the timeframe and the world that the game takes place in?

NK: Of course, Neuro is based on detailed Universe. Now I won’t tell you the whole story, full world description, but it is really saturated and we had a great job to make it carefully done. The surface information is in my first answer. In Neuro Universe there are own rules, laws, taboos and special features. It was a huge job to invent the logical chain, every detail of the game was thought out. But, those who played Homeplanet – actually, [the] background of Neuro, already know it.

How many missions do you hope to include?

NK: There are 10 missions in the game, while some of them are separated in several locations.

In addition to psi-abilities, are there any futuristic weapons to take control of? Any way of defending yourself against the enemy?

NK: Of course, some number of futuristic weapon is in the game. For example, “Tesla’s Resonator” - it destroys the human’s organism from inside. 

There's been talk of hyperdrive engines – what is their purpose?

NK: Hyper-engines were invented for traveling with hyperlight (faster-than-light) speed. It is the only possibility to travel between the star systems. That’s why in Neuro the time counts from THE day when the hyper-engines were invented, that opened a new era in human’s life.

What's the advanced particle rendering system all about?

NK: Graphic engine Neuro is almost written on high-level shader language. It allows creating such effects as particle lighting, particle based reflection and many others. This is why the game require graphic cards with shaders version 2.0.

Why was the Megon Engine chosen for this game?

NK: Megon is a brand new and promising engine. It is lightning fast but, of course, is not free from some glitches. Anyway we are quite satisfied with its capabilities and we are trying to make world of the game as interactive as possible.
 

Thank you for your time.